


Changing the Carpets

by dandeliontea



Series: tma fantasy week shorts [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Demonic Possession, Gen, TMA Fantasy Week (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29978742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandeliontea/pseuds/dandeliontea
Summary: When Jon wakes, he’s hungry. Tired. His eyes itch, and his wrists and ankles are bound securely to a hospital bed, sheets torn and bloody in places. Elias Bouchard is hovering in the corner of the room, and a priest is sat over Jon’s bed, looking as exhausted as he feels and with long red scratches down his face and hand.Good Lord, Jon thinks to himself. Not again.
Relationships: Implied Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist/Martin Blackwood
Series: tma fantasy week shorts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2205255
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	Changing the Carpets

**Author's Note:**

> Another one for tma fantasy week, Thursday: ‘spirit’, with a hint of ‘summoning’.

“Jon,” Martin says, and Jon raises his head only high enough that he can see Martin’s hands clutching a steaming mug of tea. Martin is wearing a thick woollen jumper, wih a short, stained-brown tear at the inner arm. “I wanted to— to say hi, when you came in, but, um. I thought you might like a bit of time to yourself? It seems kind of mad that Elias isn’t giving you paid time off.”

Martin sounds... unsure. Self-conscious, perhaps, in that familiarly Martin way of his. “Ah,” Jon manages. “Yes. I didn’t know if you — or anyone else, for that matter— would want to see me, after...” He waves a hand around the room, where the thing that had been inhabiting him had left its lasting mark. He keeps finding eyes watching him from their hidden places, gouged at the bottom of drawers and drawn at the corners of the walls, in books and under papers and carved into the floor. There’s only one eye on the floor, actually, but it’s so enormous that Jon had felt the urgent need to pull a large tarp from storage the moment that he’d first seen it, and he’s planning on investing in a thick carpet within the week. Even now, covered though it is, he can sense the prickling of it beneath his feet. Elias had waved off Jon’s insistence on an immediate office transfer while they fixed the damage, because of course he had.

“Right. Um. Do you... remember any of it?” Martin shuffles into the office and closes the door gently behind him. “I was reading about it online — y’know, possession, and all of that — and it said that usually people don’t remember what happened, so... yeah? I thought you might want me to tell you?”

Jon closes his eyes for a moment. “I don’t recall anything concrete,” he admits, after a few moments, “But there are some things that come through. Like I was dreaming. There was... I don’t know. Fear.”

“Oh.” Martin places the mug of tea at Jon’s elbow, so softly that it makes Jon’s perpetual headache throb behind his eyes like the beginnings of a migraine. “I’m so sorry, Jon.”

“No, I don’t mean  my fear,” he says. “I mean... I wasn’t scared, I don’t think, mostly just... just, ah, other things. But I could feel everyone else’s fear. Tim’s. Sasha’s. Yours. Rosie’s. And strangers, too — mostly strangers.” He glances up at Martin from the corner of his eye, and sees Martin’s brows creased in thought.

“That makes sense,” Martin says. “Um, you said some stuff, to me and Tim, the last time we spoke to you before you ran off. I mean — not  you , obviously, but the demon. In Latin. I got Sasha to translate it, because I couldn’t get it out of my head, it’s kind of... haunted my nightmares. Ha.”

Martin’s miserable little almost-chuckle makes Jon cringe, but he takes a steadying breath and asks, “What was it?”

“I can’t remember the exact wording. Um... something _misereriam_... _esurio_? Or something like it.”

“My Latin’s a little rusty,” Jon tells him, even as his stomach lurches with recognition.  _ Misereriam _ , he thinks he might know; English and Latin aren’t so dissimilar. And  _ esurio _ . Hunger. “What does...?”

“It, um. It means ‘for your misery, I hunger’,” says Martin, and gives another awful laugh. “It’s... it’s not the worst thing you said to us, but it’s probably the, um... the one that stuck with me the most. It was the first time that I really  knew that it wasn’t you. I know some of what happened after you left, since I was trying to keep tabs on you while the police were hunting for you, but there’s some gaps. Do you want me to gather them up for you?”

“Yes,” Jon says, before he can talk himself out of it. “I think I need to know, don’t I?”

“Sure.” Martin’s hand hovers awkwardly over Jon’s shoulder, but he draws it back after a moment. Jon has no idea how to let Martin know just how much he wants that comfort, so he clears his throat and picks up the tea, taking a sip. “Whatever you need,” Martin adds, painfully sincere. “It wasn’t your fault that you got possessed, and what the demon did using your body wasn’t your fault, either.”

Jon doubts that, but he hums in assent. There must be some reason that it was Jon who got possessed, and none of his colleagues 

_Again,_ says a snide voice in his head. God,  _ again _ . He’d been told, when he was younger, after what the doctors called his ‘little incident’, that the likelihood of being possessed goes up significantly after the first time. Usually it’s the same demon, but not always. Either way, it changes you permanently. Opens you. 

Scientific studies into the causes of possession are thin and far between, although Jon is in the right place to find the ones do exist; regardless, there’s little doubt in his mind that after the second possession, that door will have been edged open more, not less.

“And I know it doesn’t seem like it,” Martin continues on, “But the others don’t think it was your fault, either. It’s just a bit hard on them, after what you — it, I mean. Um. What it did, when it got found out.”

This, Jon knows about, vaguely. Rosie had screamed when she’d seen him walk in on Monday. Tim always keeps his eyes fixed on Jon whenever they’re in the room together, like if he looks away for even a moment then Jon will pounce. Whenever he trails off for a moment in the middle of a sentence — too often, lately — Sasha glances at the door like she’s ready to make a run for it. And worst of all, Elias had sent an email around the entire Institute when he’d gotten back, congratulating Jon on his successful exorcism and announcing his return to work, and that there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. He’d made an off-colour joke about everyone’s eyelids being safe, which is. Something.

There’s been hints of it beyond that, too. Environmental storytelling. The dent in a cabinet in the break room that had apparently been made by Martin’s head. A handle knocked loose on a cupboard. The eyes carved in strange places, floors and ceiling and desk drawers. And Jon is technically not banned from anywhere in the Institute, but anywhere that he goes that isn’t the Archives gets him the strangest looks, fearful or curious or confused .

Jon takes another, longer sip of tea. Perfectly made, of course, because Martin can be awfully thorough when he wants to be. “What if it is, though?”

“What?” asks Martin.

“My fault. No one knows why people get possessed, you know; it seems unlikely that it just... chose someone at  random .” That it’s the second malignant spirit that’s chosen him as a host in the past two decades, when most people can get away with never encountering a demon even once. “But thank you,” he adds, as Martin opens his mouth to protest, “For trying to make me feel better.” He waves a hand. “You should get back to it.”

“But—“

“Martin,” Jon says. “Please.”

He must look about as pitiable as he feels, because Martin’s shoulders drop, and he nods, closing the door behind him with a final, “But if you need anything, I’m right outside. And... I’ll bring in all the stuff tomorrow.”

Jon waits until he closes the door to drop his head into his hands with a heavy sigh. And there, peeking out from under the edge of the keyboard — another eye, looking back at him. He covers it up with a folder, and gets back to work. 

**Author's Note:**

> Not actually any spirits or possessions in here, but more of a... conversation about being possessed. Which is pretty much the same thing, right? As ever, let me know what you thought! Also if anyone ever wanted to volunteer to give things a read through before I post them that’d be great lol, I am terrible at proof reading x


End file.
